Nix NASA Completely, Apollo Astronaut Says

Below:

Next story in Space

NASA should be scrapped in favor of a new agency, one with the
sole objective of furthering America's exploration of deep space.
So says Harrison Schmitt, the last man to set foot on the moon,
in a proposal published online today (May 25).

Schmitt, a member of Apollo 17 in 1972 and later a one-term U.S.
senator, proposed that the new space agency be called the
National Space Exploration Administration.

Fifty years after
John F. Kennedy's famous speech that set America on its
glorious path to the moon, Schmitt, 75, said NASA has lost its
focus. The Apollo program helped win the Cold War, strengthened
national unity and set up the United States to take control of
lunar resources, but NASA has withered under later presidencies,
including Barack Obama's, Schmitt said.

Schmitt's call for overhauling the space program is partly a
response to Obama's 2012 budget, which critics say increased the
funding for space technology research at NASA but did not provide
adequate funding for deep-space exploration.

Other Apollo astronauts have lamented the lack of focus on
exploration.

In a May 24 op-ed in USA Today, Apollo mission commanders Neil
Armstrong, Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan wrote, "After a
half-century of remarkable progress, a coherent plan for
maintaining America's leadership in space exploration is no
longer apparent."

Apollo 17 crewmates Cernan and Schmitt were the world's last
moonwalkers.

If formed in 2013, the proposed NSEA could send Americans back to
the moon by 2020, Schmitt says, and establish lunar settlements
and Mars exploration and settlements in the decades after that.
It also would develop the ability to deflect Earth-bound
asteroids. All of NASA's current scientific endeavors would be
within the purview of the National Science Foundation and other
government-funded science organizations.

"This is not just a competition between nations; it's a
competition between freedom and tyranny," Schmitt said. "The
United States is the only power on Earth today that has in its
DNA a protection of liberty, and if we decide to back off from
space or any other major human endeavor, then we put that liberty
in jeopardy.

"The Obama administration has basically said that they won't
pursue an exceptional space program for the United States and
that they're just as happy to have China move forward into deep
space, and be dependent on Russia for transport to the
International Space Station."

Schmitt, who was elected to the Senate in 1976 as a Republican
from New Mexico, says China's domination of deep space and
Russia's domination of near-Earth space would lower America's
international standing of the U.S. in the same way the Soviet
Union winning the space race would have changed the outcome of
the Cold War.

On top of the perceptions and politics, Schmitt argues that
deep-space exploration is necessary for controlling space
resources ? in particular, a fusion fuel called helium-3 that
comes from the sun and is preserved in lunar soils. "Under
certain financial constraints, helium-3 can be economically
viable as a fuel for fusion power reactors here on Earth, and to
have that dominated by another power such as China I think would
be very dangerous for us. That's just another aspect of the
geopolitical significance of exploration," Schmitt said.

National identity

In the 1960s, pride in the Apollo program strengthened national
unity and rejuvenated science and math education in schools.
Schmitt believes the same things could happen — and need to
happen — again.

Funding the NSEA (as well as increasing the funding of the other
programs that would take over NASA's science departments) would
cost $2 billion to $3 billion more than NASA currently costs
taxpayers, Schmitt estimated. He believes taxpayers would be
willing to foot the bill.

"I think the American public is very, very supportive of vigorous
American activities in space," Schmitt said. "Survey after survey
has shown that."